LinkedIn ads bidding: maximum delivery, cost cap and manual bidding

This guide is built from LinkedIn's Marketing Solutions help pages: campaign and ad set bidding strategies, the separate articles on maximum delivery, cost cap and manual bidding, the LinkedIn advertising auction, advertising cost and pricing, objective-based pricing and campaign and ad set budgets. Campaign structure, objectives, targeting and tracking are covered in our LinkedIn ads basics guide, so they are not repeated here.

How the LinkedIn auction sets your price

LinkedIn runs an auction when an ad placement becomes available for a member in your target audience. Your ad competes with ads "that have similar formats and target audiences," and LinkedIn says the two key factors that decide which ads appear are "the ad's bid price and ad's relevancy to the member."

Relevancy reflects how likely members are to interact with the ad. LinkedIn lists member activity, page context, ad content and targeting as inputs, and says the score can change over time as members interact with your content. Its pricing article puts the practical effect plainly: "The more relevant your ad, the lower the price you pay." The other cost factors it names are the desirability of your target audience, your bidding strategy and your objective.

LinkedIn also describes the auction as second-price. In its accelerated delivery article it says you'll "only pay $0.01 more than the bid offered by the next highest bidder," with the example of an $8 bid against a next-highest $4 bid costing $4.01. Because you compete with other advertisers, LinkedIn notes "there isn't a set cost per result. It's auction-based and not guaranteed inventory."

The three bidding strategies

LinkedIn offers maximum delivery (automated), cost cap and manual bidding. Which ones you see depends on the objective and ad format of the ad set; our LinkedIn ad objectives guide lists them per objective. LinkedIn's overview table, summarised:

Maximum delivery

Maximum delivery "uses machine learning to automatically bid for you while aiming to deliver your entire budget." You don't enter a bid or a cap; ad sets are charged by impressions, and the system optimises toward the optimization goal you chose, such as clicks, impressions, reach, leads, qualified leads or conversions.

• Learning phase. A new maximum delivery ad set enters a learning phase while Campaign Manager gathers auction data, and LinkedIn warns that results might fluctuate during it.
• Not for Dynamic ads. It isn't available for ad sets using Dynamic ad formats (jobs, spotlight or follower ads).
• Frequency. With a large budget and a small audience, LinkedIn may show your ad to the same member more than once, which can mean higher frequency and lower reach.

LinkedIn recommends starting with maximum delivery "to gain an understanding of the performance potential of your entire budget," and switching to cost cap when you need to control the cost per result.

Cost cap

With cost cap you enter a cost per result, which Campaign Manager uses as a benchmark when it sets and adjusts your bids. LinkedIn stresses that this is an average: it "tries to stay under" the amount "by first going after the lowest cost events available in the ad auction," and "the actual average cost per result might be different from the cost per key result you set." You are still charged by impressions.

Cost cap has the most rules about change:

• The learning phase is continuous while the ad set is active, and cost is most likely to fluctuate in the first seven days.
• Changing the audience, audience attributes, bidding strategy or creatives resets the learning phase. Editing the cost per result amount or pausing can also restart it.
• LinkedIn recommends running a cost cap ad set for at least 15 days.

It is only available for certain combinations. Per LinkedIn's table: single image, video and carousel ads for brand awareness (impressions goal) and lead generation (leads goal); those three plus event ads for website visits (landing page clicks) and engagement (engagement clicks); and video ads for video views. LinkedIn's overview says cost cap "also allows for cost control for Leads."

Manual bidding

Manual bidding lets you "specify the amount you're willing to bid for a key result." It is available for all objectives, ad formats and optimization goals, and gives you the most control over the bid, though LinkedIn says it "might not deliver the same ad set results as optimized bidding strategies." The lowest bid allowed is $0.01 per result, or the local-currency equivalent.

The trade-off is upkeep. If the bid is not high enough, the ad set wins fewer placements, and LinkedIn says the bid "might also need to be adjusted manually throughout the lifetime of the ad set to remain competitive." If you enter a bid below the recommendation, Campaign Manager shows a warning that it will not reach the target audience.

Enhanced and optimized manual bidding

Depending on the objective and format, manual bidding may run as enhanced bidding (Sponsored Content formats) or optimized bidding (Sponsored Messaging formats, for website visits, lead generation and website conversions; LinkedIn says this is still being rolled out). In both, the system raises your maximum bid for auctions that look more likely to lead to high-value results and lowers it when a click seems less likely to convert, trying to keep your average cost per result below the maximum you set.

You can switch it off for the landing page clicks goal (website visits) and the engagement clicks goal (engagement). For clicks under website visits, leads under lead generation, and website conversions or conversions under website conversions, it can't be disabled.

Bid suggestions

When you choose cost cap or manual bidding, Campaign Manager shows a suggested bid range. LinkedIn describes it as "an estimate of the current competing costs or bids by other advertisers who are targeting the same audience." For Sponsored Content with manual bidding, the suggestion also adjusts to your budget to help you spend it in full.

In general, LinkedIn says, "the higher your cost cap or bid, the more competitive your ads." Its ad set setup best practices recommend either maximum delivery or following the bid recommendations, and warn that a bid that is too low will not be competitive in the auction.

What you are charged for, by objective

The objective, optimization goal and bidding strategy together decide the chargeable event. A few examples from LinkedIn's objective-based pricing tables:

LinkedIn defines a video view as "two or more continuous seconds of playback while the video is at least 50 percent on screen." For lead generation, the qualified leads goal runs on maximum delivery only, and LinkedIn's budget, schedule and bid steps say eligible lead generation ad sets default to qualified leads with maximum delivery. Message ads are explained in our LinkedIn conversation ads guide.

Budgets and pacing

Your bid works inside a budget. LinkedIn offers a daily budget, a lifetime budget, or both, and paces spend differently for each:

• Daily budget, continuous schedule: paced over a virtual Monday-to-Sunday week. A day can run up to 100% over the daily amount, but the week won't exceed seven times the daily budget. LinkedIn's example: a $100 daily budget can spend $200 on one day but no more than $700 in the week.
• Daily budget, set dates: total spend won't exceed the daily budget multiplied by the number of days.
• Lifetime budget: daily spend varies with impression opportunities, and total spend never exceeds the lifetime budget. LinkedIn sets a minimum lifetime budget based on the schedule length. A lifetime budget is required for a custom schedule of days and hours.
• Daily and lifetime together: only with a continuous schedule; the ad set ends when the lifetime amount is spent.

Campaign-level budget optimization, called Dynamic Group Budget, shares one budget across the ad sets in a campaign. LinkedIn's best practices say all ad sets in it must use the same objective, bidding strategy and budget type, but they can have different bid amounts when cost cap or manual bidding is used. It supports Sponsored Content formats only, needs a campaign daily budget of at least $30 USD, and holds 1 to 50 ad sets. Ad sets with the largest audiences will likely take more of the budget, and LinkedIn recommends running a campaign for at least a week before making changes.

Accelerated delivery for events

Accelerated delivery tries to spend an ad set's budget as quickly as possible during a live event. LinkedIn says it is still being tested and rolled out gradually. It only works with the event ad format and a lifetime budget, under the engagement objective (any bidding strategy) or website visits (manual bidding only). The ad set can run for 1 to 24 hours, and you can't turn accelerated delivery off after saving. LinkedIn warns it "will likely result in higher costs as higher bids are needed to win more auctions," and suggests separate ad sets with maximum delivery before and after the event.

Where to set the bid

Bidding lives in the Budget & schedule section of the ad set. You review the optimization goal Campaign Manager recommends (you can't change it for Sponsored Messaging formats), check the bidding strategy it selected, and for cost cap or manual bidding enter the amount. You need account manager or campaign manager access to change these settings; our Campaign Manager roles guide explains the roles.

Two timing details from LinkedIn: ad sets start at 12:00 AM UTC on the start date and end at 11:59 PM UTC on the end date, and a start date already set can't be moved to within the next 24 hours. LinkedIn also suggests setting up an ad set at least 48 hours before it starts and running it for at least seven days.

How we choose a bidding strategy

This is our own practice, not LinkedIn's guidance:

• We start new ad sets on maximum delivery to see what the budget can buy, then compare the cost per result against what a lead or visit is worth to the business.
• When that cost is too high and the combination supports it, we move to cost cap and leave it alone for the learning period instead of editing it every few days.
• We use manual bidding when a client needs a hard ceiling per click, and check the bid against the suggested range each week.
• We judge results against leads that reach the CRM, not platform clicks; see our B2B website lead generation guide.

If you also run Google or Meta ads, the same ideas appear under other names: compare our guides to Google Ads budgets and bidding and Meta ads bid strategies.

Frequently asked questions

Which LinkedIn bidding strategy should I start with?

LinkedIn recommends maximum delivery to learn how many results your full budget can generate, then cost cap if you need to control the cost per result.

Is a LinkedIn cost cap a hard limit?

No. It is an average that Campaign Manager tries to stay under, and LinkedIn says the actual average cost per result might be different from the amount you set.

What is the minimum bid on LinkedIn?

For manual bidding, the lowest bid is $0.01 per result, or the equivalent in your local currency. Bids below the suggested range are unlikely to win enough auctions.

Can LinkedIn spend more than my daily budget?

On a given day, yes: up to 100% more than the daily budget. Over a Monday-to-Sunday week on a continuous schedule, spend won't exceed seven times the daily budget.

Does ad quality affect what I pay?

Yes. The auction weighs your bid and your ad's relevancy, and LinkedIn says the more relevant your ad, the lower the price you pay.

For more on LinkedIn advertising, see our guides to LinkedIn ads basics, LinkedIn Matched Audiences, LinkedIn document ads and LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads.